bunions

Lenehan’s
bunions

U 12.1226-8: - Twenty to one, says
Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit,
and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre. [...]

Lenehan’s jokey style abounds in wordplay and
comic allusion. One expression that has passed the annotators undetected is "talking about bunions". This apparently nonsensical and Lenehanesque
expression dates back to the theatre of the 1860s, and is another link between
Joyce and Lord Dundreary (of the celebrated "dundrearies" or long side
whiskers: U 14.889) and the punning
burlesque-writer Henry James Byron (see Shine
on, Harvest Moon).

Lord Dundreary made his first appearance on
stage in October 1858, on Broadway. The character of a foppish
English lord
with eccentric dress, manners, and speech was intended as a minor attraction in
Thomas Taylor’s Our American Cousin.
The part was offered to the jobbing and not particularly successful English
actor – then seeking fame and fortune in America – Edward Askew Sothern.
Sothern reluctantly took the part and had little impact during the first few
weeks of the play’s run at Laura Keene’s Theatre. But it is said that he grew
into and shaped the part, building up the whimsical fop by writing amusing new lines,
developing his stammer, lisp, and skipping walk, and gradually emerging as the
star of the show.

[Right: Edward Askew Sothern as Lord Dundreary(Wikimedia Commons)]

Sothern’s
success with the character was repeated in Britain and Ireland, and also in New
Zealand – but not in France. The eccentric English gentleman puzzled the
Parisians. Such was the success of the character elsewhere that Sothern wrote
or co-wrote or cajoled others to write sequels which were essentially vehicles
for his Dundreary character.

Sothern
was regularly in Dublin. The Freeman’s
Journal of 15 October 1864 advertises his engagement at the Theatre Royal:

Theatre Royal,
Dublin. –

Engagement of

Mr. Sothern,

Positively for Six
Nights only, commencing on Monday,

October 17,

In Monday and
Tuesday, October 17 and 18.

Our American Cousin.

Lord Dundreary……Mr Sothern,

To coincide with the
laughable Farce of

A Regular Fix.

Mr Hugh de Brass……Mr. Sothern.

On Wednesday, October
19,

The New Comedy of David Garrick.

David Garrick……Mr. Sothern.

and

Lord Dundreary Married and Settled.

Lord Dundreary……Mr. Sothern.

The significance of this lies in the new
one-act sequel Lord Dundreary Married and
Settled performed on 19 October 1864.1 This had been written by
Sothern, with help from the established playwright Henry Byron. Its comedy
centred around Dundreary’s marriage and subsequent difficulties with his new
wife’s friends and her mother. When Sothern took the play to New York in 1873
the Herald of 4 April, p. 6,
reported:

The
piece is a roaring farce as absurd and funny as possible. Mr. Sothern, as Lord
Dundreary, gave the old part its old interpretation, but under other
circumstances, and with different surroundings. Some of Dundreary's
observations are very droll. "Speaking
of bunions," he says to his wife, "how is your mother?" Of course the house
is vastly amused at a remark as opportune and betraying so much of the tender
and solicitous son-in-law.2

Sothern
appeared regularly in the play in Dublin. The Freeman’s records him there in October 1868, and in 1874 it relates
how Michael and John Gunn, kings of Dublin theatre management

telegraphed to Mr.
Sothern to San Francisco, asking him to accept an engagement at the Royal, and
the affair was quickly and satisfactorily settled by the agency of the electric
wire. The engagement is sure to be a popular one. Dundreary and David Garrick
are impersonations of world-wide fame.

Freeman's Journal (1874) 7 August

Sothern was back at the Gaiety in Dublin (managed
by Michael Gunn) ten years later in 1884, with Our American Cousin, Sam
Dundreary’s Brother, and the "screaming farce" Dundreary Married and Settled, just a couple of column inches above
a report of the Misses Flynn’s annual concert at the Antient Concert Rooms, at
which Bartle
McCarthy and “Mr.J S
Joyce” (Joyce’s father) were performing.3

Lord Dundreary’s catchphrases were
well-known in Britain, Ireland, and America. The Decatur (Illinois) Daily
Republican (1881) 17 June 1 had listed, amongst its "Authentic Sayings of
Great Men":

"Talking of bunions, how’s your mother?" –
Socrates.

The
Daily Astorian (Astoria, Oregon)
(1883) 5 May records a development of the expression:

Talking about bunions, it may be in order to ask how that
Clatsop road project is coming on.

and over the next few years
the Daily Astorian seemed to take
quite a shine to the expression. See, for example:

Talking of bunions, how about these fire insurance rates? Are
Astorians going to keep on passing their surplus profits into the pockets of
San Francisco $10,000 a year gentlemen, or shall we have an insurance company
of our own?

Daily Astorian (Astoria, Oregon) (1889) 10 December, p. 3

As late as 1915 Sothern’s son, interviewed
when reprising the role himself, spoke of his father’s jokes – and of how they
were not new even in the 1860s:

The three tickler in "Lord Dundreary" are not
new, of course. Mr. Sothern merely claims they are pretty blamed funny, and he
just wants to see anybody write a joke that can beat them.

Here they are:

First - Speaking of bunions, how is your
mother?

Second – Why does a
dog wag its tail? Because its body is heavier than its tail.

Third – He cures new
ralgia. Yours is old.

Evening World (1915)6
December

The expression is an amusing device for
introducing a new topic which is apparently (and typically whimsically) linked
to the previous one. In extended use it moves from meaning "while we are on the
subject of …" to "apropos of nothing…"), in line with Dundreary’s distracted
and "innocent" style. Dundreary links bunions and his mother-in-law; Lenehan
follows bunionswith an oblique reference to
women in general and to the ill-fated five-year-old mare Sceptre in particular (“Frailty, thy
name is woman! – A little month, or ere those shoes were old […]).

So Lenehan’s "talking about bunions" can be
traced back to the Dublin and New York stage. It turns out to be another of the
evocative expressions that Joyce put into the mouth of Lenehan from the world
of comic theatrical entertainment.